The Apple TV+ sci-fi comedy series “Murderbot,” based on “The Murderbot Diaries” books by Martha Wells, built up a fan base over the course of its first season thanks to its distinctive tone, which is not quite like anything else on TV right now. While each individual part of its plot — robots achieving independence, corporate dystopias, “found family” sitcom dynamics, sci-fi nerd meta-humor — is something we’ve seen before, these different elements come together in a unique way through the distinctive voice of Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard), a biotech Security Unit who’d rather be watching “premium quality content” than interacting with humans.

As a result, there are many different routes one can go when trying to find other shows that are similar to “Murderbot.” Do you want more of the hard sci-fi world-building, or do you want a show with more of its comedic take on the genre? Do such recommendations even have to be science fiction at all, or is it the characterization and general themes that matter more when describing a show as being “like ‘Murderbot'”? Here are 12 great TV series — ones which Murderbot itself might declare “premium quality” — that capture different aspects of what makes “Murderbot” so special.

If you’re looking for a sci-fi comedy that has its cake and eats it too — satirizing the genre while also being a genuinely good example of it in its own right — look no further than “Futurama.” This animated sitcom, from “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, centers around a 20th century slacker, Philip J. Fry (Billy West), who gets frozen on New Year’s Eve 1999 and reawakens on the eve of the 31st century. In this high-tech but highly dysfunctional future, Fry joins the crew of the Planet Express intergalactic delivery company.

At its best, the writing in “Futurama” is so smart it invents new math equations for the sake of a joke and so skillful that it can somehow drop the saddest episode of TV ever between gags about shiny metal posteriors. Crime-loving alcoholic robot Bender Bending Rodriguez (John DiMaggio) is easily the show’s most popular character, and while Bender’s party animal personality stands in sharp contrast to the asexual introvert Murderbot, he would appreciate the name “Murderbot” in light of his own unrealized dreams of killing all humans. Having been revived from cancellation three times now, “Futurama” may be unkillable, and could very well last as long as Murderbot’s favorite show, “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.”

The dystopian setting of the Corporation Rim in “Murderbot” shows what can go wrong when the forces of unchecked capitalism run the world. “Fallout,” the Prime Video streaming show inspired by the popular video game series of the same name, shows what happens after those same forces end the world. It’s bleak stuff, but somehow, like “Murderbot,” “Fallout” approaches its apocalyptic horrors with a sense of humor and humanity.

The retro-futuristic stylization and ultra-violent action scenes of “Fallout,” brought to life with top-notch special effects, immediately grab your attention. But what holds your interest beyond the spectacle are the story’s mysteries, social satire, and great cast of characters, including Vault 33 escapee Lucy MacClean (Ella Purnell), Brotherhood of Steel squire Maximus (Aaron Moten), and Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), a former movie star mutated by the nuclear bombs into an immortal Ghoul. Don’t worry if you haven’t played the games; though set in canon and with plenty of Easter eggs for hardcore fans to enjoy, this TV adaptation stands on its own.

The line between robots and humans has been a common theme for anime going back to the original 1963 “Astro Boy” TV series, and “Apocalypse Hotel” is one of the latest and greatest android-centric anime. Hotel manager Yachiyo (Saho Shirasu) is built for customer service, a career Murderbot would rather self-destruct over than endure, but what “Apocalypse Hotel” and “Murderbot” have in common is their wide tonal range, able to navigate between silly humor and serious drama in stories that get dark without becoming pessimistic.

At the start of “Apocalypse Hotel,” Yachiyo and the other robots at the Gingarou Hotel are waiting patiently for their next guests after a pandemic has wiped out all humans on Earth (a few, supposedly, have fled to space stations, and Yachiyo awaits their return). Eventually, their hotel does start attracting new guests … from other planets. Since both the robots and some of these guests have very long life spans, the story covers many millennia in its 12-episode run, with the long time frame allowing for some fascinating character development. Reminiscent of “WALL-E” or the musical “Maybe Happy Ending,” this anime’s lovable robot characters can make you laugh one second and cry the next.

For a more realistic live-action drama about sentient artificial intelligence, you could watch HBO’s “Westworld” — and then give up midway through as it gets worse and more confusing after its first season. Or you could watch “Humans,” the British Channel 4 series that aired on AMC in the United States and was often compared to “Westworld,” but (while still arguably peaking in its first season) never declined in quality quite so dramatically throughout its three-season run.

Adapted from the Swedish series “Real Humans,” “Humans” takes place in a world identical to the present day — circa 2015 — except for the existence of “synths,” green-eyed synthetic androids bought and sold as servants. Synths are supposed to be mindless machines, but scientist David Elster (Stephen Boxer) has designed a human-synth hybrid and four synths with human-like consciousness meant to accompany him, dropping them into a world that doesn’t recognize their humanity. 

The synths’ experiences are both thought-provoking and horrifying in a “Black Mirror”-esque manner, so one can’t really blame one of the synths, named Niska (Emily Berrington), when she responds to her treatment by humans with violence. The drama escalates as consciousness spreads to more synths, forcing a widespread reckoning with how humankind treats its creations.

One might be tempted to argue that “Rick and Morty” is the more fitting Dan Harmon show to compare to “Murderbot.” However, while that sci-fi series might be more similar to “Murderbot” genre-wise, it’s also got a much more manic style and a nihilistic streak that gives it a different vibe. With its more positive tone and its themes of characters reluctantly forming connections, Harmon’s earlier cult favorite sitcom “Community” actually feels closer to the general ethos of “Murderbot” (and despite its more realistic setting, “Community” does play with sci-fi concepts in its “Darkest Timeline” stories).

You could easily describe Murderbot’s whole deal by saying it’s a combination of Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), the snarky, disgraced lawyer who tries to keep himself at a distance from other people, and Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), the autistic pop culture geek who navigates social situations by imagining (or perhaps actually knowing) that he’s in a TV show. The central study group, which turns into the “Save Greendale Committee” after the characters graduate, is one of the most entertaining found families in sitcom history, and the show offers a combination of grounded character-driven stories and wild experimental episodes that land in different genres. 

A reunion movie has long been in the works, promising to make Abed’s catchphrase of “Six seasons and a movie” — his idea of the perfect length for a TV series — into a reality.

If your favorite part of “Murderbot” is the way the protagonist in a sci-fi TV show geeks out over other sci-fi TV shows, then you’ll almost certainly enjoy the anime series “Martian Successor Nadesico.” Being anime, instead of a “Star-Trek”-meets-soap-opera pastiche like “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon,” the show-within-a-show that gradually becomes the whole spaceship crew’s obsession is the super robot series “Gekiganger III” (which got semi-defictionalized with a half-hour direct-to-video release).

Martian refugee Akito Tenkawa (Yuji Ueda) would much rather be watching anime and cooking nice meals than going to war, but like many a reluctant mecha pilot, he has to “get in the robot” and defend Earth from the Jovian Lizards. In a clever twist, it turns out the Jovians are also “Gekiganger III” fanatics, leading to some important commentary on media literacy and the ways fandom can turn toxic. “Martian Successor Nadesico” blends classic space opera drama with self-aware parody, featuring a memorably eccentric cast of characters and harem-style romantic shenanigans (to paraphrase another mecha parody, “Megas XLR,” chicks dig giant robot pilots).

One of the many different metaphorical lenses that “Murderbot” can be viewed through is that of parenting. From the perspective of the SecUnit, the hippies it has to protect as they run into danger seem as helpless as an infant does to a parent — though of course, Murderbot can be viewed as child-like in other regards, and eventually needs to be saved by its human clients. If you want a show that turns this interpretation into the explicit text — an armored warrior becoming the reluctant protector of a seemingly helpless being that proves to be more capable than it first appears  — then watching “The Mandalorian” is the way to go.

Not that “The Mandalorian” needs us recommending it. The first live-action “Star Wars” streaming series is easily one of the most popular shows on television, with a theatrical movie, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” coming out on May 2, 2026. The lead role of Din Djarin is largely responsible for Pedro Pascal’s meteoric rise to stardom. At its best, “The Mandalorian” is “Star Wars” at its most elemental, calling back to the Westerns and samurai films that originally inspired George Lucas. At its worst, it still has Grogu, aka “Baby Yoda,” and how can you not love that little Muppet toddler?

For another serialized comedy that uses its story and humor to explore philosophical concepts, “The Good Place” is the forking greatest. The series’ initial set-up is that Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), a selfish sleazebag who was never good to anyone in life, dies and gets welcomed into The Good Place in the afterlife. Instantly aware she doesn’t belong there, she seeks the help of her assigned “soulmate,” chronically indecisive moral philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), to teach her how to become a good person. What happens after that, over the course of four seasons packed with twists and turns, is best left unspoiled.

When talking about “The Good Place” in connection with “Murderbot,” we have to bring up Janet (D’Arcy Carden), the “not a girl, not a robot” living encyclopedia and guide to the afterlife who evolves to be more human-like over the course of her many resets and interactions with the main cast. Janet ends up becoming a vital part of “Team Cockroach,” and unlike Murderbot, Janet also begins to develop romantic feelings as a result of her programming to please humans.

If you wished “Murderbot” spent more time on the study and exploration of other planets, there’s no better show to check out than “Scavengers Reign.” Lasting only one season on HBO Max (and also made available on Netflix), this underrated animated drama for adults will transport you to the most beautifully illustrated alien ecosystem this side of a Mœbius graphic novel or a Hayao Miyazaki movie.

Keep in mind that this beauty coexists with terror. The freaky kaiju sex in “Murderbot” has nothing on the sheer nightmarish nature of life on the planet Vesta in “Scavengers Reign.” It’s an environmentalist show that doesn’t soft-pedal the inherent violence found within nature. Yet there’s paradoxically an almost relaxing ASMR quality to how neatly every eerie part of the landscape fits together. 

The thoughtfulness of the world-building and animation is ultimately more important to the quality of the experience than the characters or story, but “Murderbot” fans interested in other takes on artificial intelligence gaining sentience will want to pay attention to the character of robot companion character Levi (Alia Shawkat), who plays a major role in the narrative’s ultimate resolution.

In “The Murderbot Diaries” novel “System Collapse,” Murderbot mentions a show that’s “semi-historical, about humans leaving their original system for the first time.” The show “mixed parts that were realistic with fun stuff like space battles and rescuing people and space monsters and throwing asteroids at planets.” That description’s a dead ringer for “The Expanse,” the TV adaptation of the book series by James S. A. Corey (the collaborative pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Fans have theorized that both series take place in the same universe, with “The Murderbot Diaries” occurring in the far future.

While rights issues make an official crossover unlikely, “The Expanse” is highly recommended for those who appreciate the world-building in “Murderbot” but want it to go more in-depth with its politics. Over three seasons on Syfy and another three on Prime Video, “The Expanse” follows the crew of the independent spaceship Rocinante, a diverse team from different planets, as they navigate conflicts between Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planetary Alliance of space colonies — and face the dangers of humanity’s first contact with alien life from beyond our solar system. 

The book series goes on longer than the show does (making sci-fi TV of this quality is expensive even when you have Jeff Bezos personally saving you from cancellation), so if you can’t get enough of “The Expanse,” there’s still more story to enjoy.

If you’re watching “Murderbot” on Apple TV+, there’s a good chance you’re also watching “Severance,” the most popular of the streaming service’s many science fiction programs. But if by some chance you’re not, get on that immediately. The mysterious workplace thriller, in which employees at the cult-like Lumon corporation mentally “sever” themselves into separate identities in and out of the office, struck a chord for how it taps into everyday fears of work consuming our lives. Visually stunning and expertly directed, it will hook you right from the pilot episode, while the long-awaited second season continued to meet the high quality standard set by the first.

“Severance” and “Murderbot” have differences in overall tone — the former is primarily a drama with elements of dark, surreal comedy, whereas the latter is more of a comedy that happens to also have serious dramatic stakes — but share a similarly wide emotional range, so fans of one will get a lot out of the other. Both also share philosophical themes relating to work, suffering, independence, and freedom that lend themselves to anti-capitalist interpretations (and please feel free to debate the irony of a corporation like Apple producing so many shows with these themes).

If Apple’s implicitly anti-capitalist sci-fi shows can cause intellectual dissonance, those are nothing compared to “I’m a Virgo,” an explicitly pro-communist miniseries that somehow got funded and distributed by Amazon. Series creator Boots Riley, a rapper who also directed the movie “Sorry to Bother You,” has never bothered being subtle with his politics. But he knows a spoonful of entertainment helps the provocation go down, and “I’m a Virgo” delivers its messages with compelling magical realism and absurdist comedy.

The show’s main character, a 13-foot-tall giant named Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), has been sheltered from the outside world throughout his childhood and discovers the joys and disappointments of modern society when he leaves home for the first time at 19. Among the colorful characters he meets on his adventures are a fascist billionaire superhero (Walton Goggins), a psychic activist (Kara Young), and a fry cook with superspeed (Olivia Washington). 

One aspect of “I’m a Virgo” that should particularly appeal to “Murderbot” fans is how it plays with representations of neurodivergence — Flora, the super-fast fry cook, perceives time so differently from everyone else that she functionally comes off as autistic. Another “Murderbot” parallel is the regular use of a show within a show, in this case an Adult Swim-style cartoon called “Parking Tickets.”